Nimba the Cave Girl By R

  Weird Tales, March, 1923

  Nimba, the Cave Girl

  By R. T. M. Scott

  ANY thousands of years ago, when

  IT WAS a hot afternoon, and the sun was the poles of the earth were its

  beating the earth in its usual relentless fury.

  M pleasant spots and when the tropics To the south the great cloud-masses of steam were too hot for human life, Nimba grew to were rising and tumbling upon themselves in her full height and was still a maid.

  rain, only to revaporize and rise again.

  Many bad been her suitors, but, from The air was still with a breathless the time she had pulled down her first wild quiet, which presaged continued fine weather animal, she had lived much apart from others and little danger of the hot humidity of the of her kind and had become known as a south, being blown northward. On the eastern mighty traveler and hunter. She could run a horizon a mighty mountain belched its head hundred miles in one day over the worst kind off and sent a column of fire into the sky that of country, and she had matched her brains rivaled the glare of the sun.

  successfully against the most wonderful of Suddenly the bushes parted behind the animal cunning. Unaided, she could support great rock-sentinel of the lake. Nimba sprang herself, and she did not want a mate—at least, out and ran to the highest vantage point. There not yet

  she stood, motionless, gazing at the burning Somewhere, not far south of what is mountain. Fire did not frighten her as it did now called James Bay, is a beautiful lake the creatures which ran on four legs; rather it lying between steep-sloping, wood-covered attracted her.

  hills. At one end of this lake a great boulder She stood long, viewing the new

  once stood, heaving its huge mass a full magnificence of the eastern horizon, her hundred feet above the water. At its back the coppery-tanned skin glistening in the sun and steep hillside gave access to its summit. At its her firm young breasts rising and falling as if front the water rippled or dashed against one they, too, saw and wondered in dreamy hundred feet of straight wall.

  contemplation. Lithe were her legs and arms, Yet not quite perfect was this wall. In and slender her waist, with hips full big but its very center, and slightly overhanging the boy-like in their taper. Her hair was bound lake, was a tiny cave, an irregular cavity large with little tendrils into a cue that reached enough to shelter two or three people. Fifty below her waist and then was doubled to keep feet above the water and fifty feet below the it off the ground. Sunburned, its hue was a top of the great rock, this natural shelter golden glory. A deep scar marked her face, against rain or enemy seemed inaccessible to but this only added to its barbaric beauty.

  anything without wings. But the skin of a Of a sudden, she bent as in the act of long-haired animal was stretched to dry listening and then leaped back into the bushes, against the back of this little cave—pegged to only to return with a small animal she had the cracks and crannies by means of great killed, and dragging behind her a stout creeper thorns. Scattered here and there were bleached of great length. Fastening one end of the bones—relics of past meals eaten by Nimba.

  creeper to a jutting rock, she threw the other

  Weird Tales

  2

  end over the face of the great boulder and, not touch!” she screamed at intervals. Finally holding with one hand the animal’s leg, Oomba climbed back to the top of the rock—

  lowered herself to the cave in the wall with all but he did not give up. He pulled the great the agility of a monkey.

  creeper up after him. He would trap the little Scarcely had she entered her tiny

  spitcat, he thought, and so tame her. But he abode before she noticed that her creeper did not know Nimba. As soon as the object of ladder was being violently agitated from her hatred became lost to sight Nimba calmed above. She leaned far out from her cove in a herself. When she saw her rope of escape perilous manner and saw descending toward withdrawn she waited for some time in her a long pair of hairy legs followed by the silence. Then she stepped to the edge of her rest of a man.

  cave home—and her body flashed forward Picking up a stout club from the back through the sunlit air like a gleam of gold. For of Her cave, Nimba waited until the legs came fifty feet the gleam curved, then struck the within reach and then caught the man a blow water silently like a knife. Fifteen yards from on his thigh that caused him to yell lustily and where she struck, Nimba’s face appeared to ascend a few feet with great rapidity.

  above the surface glancing upward toward the He did not entirely retreat, however, top of the rock.

  but, turning around like a caterpillar on a Oomba peering over the rock,

  thread, again descended, this time head first in witnessed Nimba’s mighty dive. For a order to keep a bright outlook.

  moment he scowled at her before dashing into the bushes just as Nimba swam into shallow NIMBA now saw the man’s face, and she water.

  disliked it more than his legs. Her small features convulsed with rage, and she spat at NIMBA rose near the shore, her club dripping him and beat the wall with her club in a in her hand. She bounded along the rough frenzy. She knew him well.

  shore line, keeping at least ankle deep in the He was Oomba, one of the strong and water. Rounding a small, wooded point, she cruel men of her tribe. When he was fifteen he came to an overhanging bough upon which had killed his grandfather for a stoneheaded she climbed.

  club. He had caught the old man unawares, Here she broke two or three small

  which act of caution had been construed as branches and sped on into the next tree and the timidity so that he had few friends until he next, throwing herself from limb to limb and became too strong to withstand.

  breaking small branches in her flight. Finally When Oomba had descended until his

  she broke a very small branch and leaped into face was within twelve inches beyond the a densely followed tree without so much as reach of the girl’s club, he hung there, crushing a leaf. And here she ensconced gloating over her with greedy, lustful eyes.

  herself from sight.

  For half an hour he hung, face downward, Her trap was laid. She clung to a limb sensuously intoning to the infuriated girl.

  as silent and watchful as any animal of prey,

  “With me hunt! With me eat! With me her lone club between her young body and the sleep!”

  bark on which she lay.

  At the end of half an hour Nimba was The minutes passed while Nimba’s

  still spitting at him and still club-being the dark eyes kept constant watch through the wall with unabated energy.

  green leaves that formed her mask. Abruptly,

  “Oomba go! Oomba go! Me you will

  as she watched, a young man stepped out and

  Nimba, the Cave Girl 3

  stood beneath her tree. Strong and straight was Two trips she made for water, which he. His eyes were bright and the hair on his was carried in a gourd and stored in a hollow face was short and soft. Not a leaf rustled as in the cave floor. This done, Nimba washed Nimba watched with growing interest. Below the young man’s face, wet his hair and her the man stood quietly scenting the air.

  propped him in a corner to recover his senses.

  Suddenly a twig snapped, and the

  Her work of mercy finished, Nimba

  young man turned like a flash, only to receive turned her attention to the animal which she Oomba’s mighty club full on the head. So had killed earlier in the day. Dragging it from silently had Oomba approached that the its corner, she placed both feet upon the body listening Nimba had not detected the slightest while she tore off a leg with one furious sound. Now he stood looking down at his wrench. As the sun was setting and the deep victim
and contemptuously turning the purple of the hills became bordered with gold, bleeding head from side to side with his foot, Nimba commenced the one meal of the day to quite unconscious of any lurking danger.

  which she was accustomed. It would soon be Clinging only by her feet from the

  time to sleep.

  bough upon which she had been lying, Nimba Almost as the last shaft of sunlight readied down and swung her club with vicious shot over the distant hills consciousness force upon the side of Oomba’s head. Beside returned to the young man as he sat propped in his own victim he fell, while Nimba dropped the corner of the cave. Slowly he looked about lightly to the ground, turning in the air like a him. He rose to his feet and walked to the cat and landing upon her feet.

  edge of the cave, where he gazed down at the Quickly she dragged Oomba to one

  lake and examined the dangling creeper down side, where two rocks abutted, and wedged his which he had been carried.

  head vice-like between them. Then she beat it Finally the young man approached

  with her club until it had no shape at all and Nimba, who had stopped eating and was the leaves and little green things nearby were silently watching him. her mouth bloody from spattered with blood. There was no doubt her raw repast. He dragged the animal from about it: Oomba was dead.

  her side and shoved her into a corner, where a jagged stone cut her shoulder, causing the GREAT satisfaction showed on Nimba’s face blood to flow. Having eaten his fill, the man when her bloody task was done.

  lay down to sleep.

  She washed the blood from her body in The great moon rose and silvered the the lake and returned to examine the young sleeping lake. A night-bird screeched as it man who had first been struck down.

  swept by the entrance to the cave and Nimba Apparently satisfied with his condition, she crept from her corner. Still bleeding, she picked him up and, trailing her bloody club, stretched herself beside the sleeping man. Her returned to her great rock at the head of the body touched his and some blood from her lake. Here she found the creeper where shoulder mingled with his in a tiny pool.

  Oomba had left it and experienced little Below them, in the water, a reptile difficulty in climbing down to the privacy of splashed its way among the reeds. Nimba and her cave with the senseless man under one her master slept.

  arm.

  Nimba had taken her mate.

 

 

  Monte Herridge, Nimba, the Cave Girl By R

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